View full sizeWith rising rents and a low rental vacancy rate, there has been a surge of new building projects with no off-street car parking including this 47-unit project at NE Sandy and NE 41st Ave.Jamie Francis/The Oregonian

Facing the fury of homeowners, the Portland City Council asked its planning bureau to draft some minimum parking space requirements for large new apartment complexes. The planning bureau took the word "minimum" to heart.

The new proposed standards, meant to appease critics and provide some cover for the council, offer few new protections for neighborhoods and businesses that are harmed by the city's ideologically driven approach. The planning commission -- and if necessary, the council itself -- should tweak the proposed rules and provide more meaningful relief.

In some parts of Portland, new apartment complexes are required to provide one parking space for every unit. But in high-traffic corridors and other places zoned for a mix of housing and retail, the city has no minimum parking standard. This means the city will cheerfully approve an 80-unit apartment complex without a single parking space, despite research indicating that the new tenants will bring at least 40 cars with them and overwhelm the surrounding public streets.

A glut of new projects, concentrated in the inner eastside, has brought this problem to the forefront. City Commissioner Amanda Fritz has shown particular leadership in listening to the concerns of homeowners and business owners, and in urging more responsible planning. In response, the planning bureau has proposed new minimum standards requiring one parking space for every four units.

At first glance, this standard seems like a defensible placeholder until the city can finish a more comprehensive look. However, there are several catches. For starters, the standard applies only to complexes with more than 40 units. A developer could still plop a 40-unit complex in the middle of a dense urban space and not build a single parking space, offloading that known burden onto the neighborhood.

Second, the rules include many ways for developers to dodge the minimum standard. By adding some spaces for bikes and motorcycles, preserving some trees, including a little transit-friendly seating area near the sidewalk, and signing up with a car-sharing company, an 80-unit complex could drop its minimum requirement from 20 parking spaces to about five or six.

Third, the city would allow developers to house their required parking spaces on nearby properties, using an easement or other legal deed to protect the parking right. Though this is an innovative idea, it would make the future redevelopment of those host properties more costly and complicated.

Finally, the city continues to base its minimal parking requirements on the idea of a high-functioning and affordable transit system. As Tri-Met continues to hike fares and chop service, it will become harder for Portlanders to adopt a car-free lifestyle.

Joe Zehnder, the city's planning director, said in an interview Wednesday that he expected few developers would do everything on the menu to buy down the number of required parking spaces. He also said his bureau worked hard to hit the right balance.

"We really did try to be responsive to the projects that were causing problems for people," he said.

Zehnder and the bureau do deserve credit for the proposal, especially the work to encourage car-sharing. Also, it's smart for the city to continue extending incentives for developers to preserve trees, add bike spaces and offer other pro-livability features.

However, one parking space for every four units should be treated as a true minimum, not as the starting bid for an even lower standard. The minimum should also apply to complexes with about 20 units and up, not 41 units and up, to account for the true impact of large projects.

Take it from Northwest Portland: Dense, mixed-use neighborhoods that fail to plan for a modest number of cars end up with parking nightmares, even with frequent transit service. That hurts local stores and restaurants, and it makes neighborhoods less livable.

Trying to fix the problem after the fact is no substitute for preventing it in the first place.